Nightlight, Shine Bright
by DarkHorseBlueSky
Summary: ...because children, he reflects, should not have to carry guns, sleep in houses made of cardboard, or hope that death takes them quickly. Nightlight's thoughts on seven children, in seven chapters. A series of drabbles. (Cover art by me)
1. The Starving

**Don't kill me, guys. I know I should be working on Death's Embrace and all those other things you're demanding of me, but I really can't help it. Plot bunnies are evil, I'm telling you.**

**I wish I could have started this sooner.**

**See, I wanted to time it so that if I update once a day, then I could post the Christmas Day one on Christmas Day, but alas, before I knew it, December 19 had passed and my timing was totally off.**

**Oh well. Here you go.**

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_The Starving_

* * *

He crouches in the shadows, waiting, watching.

He expects to see a truck coming down the dirt road — a parade of trucks, maybe, all piled high with food. Where are they? He had heard they would come. But they are not here.

For lack of anything else to eat, he picks up a stick and begins to gnaw on the end, hoping that the mere movement of his jaw will somehow trick his stomach into feeling full. His eyes are hollow and glint brightly in the clear African moonlight. His limbs are little more than bones and a thin, dark layer of dirt-covered skin.

It makes me sick to see him crouching there, lingering on the outskirts of the village too poor to feed their children.

But, as much as I wish, I have nothing to give him. Innocence, light, courage, wonder, memories, fun — what are they to a boy like this?

Only dreams and hope remain.

Dreams of food and water, _clean _food and water, and all that he could ever want.

Hope of living another day.

I can do nothing more than hope with him, and make sure that my moonbeam shines as bright as it can in this dark world.


	2. The Silent

**Why does it always take me so long to write something so short and angsty?**

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_The Silent_

* * *

She is sobbing.

Curled up in the corner of her closet bedroom (not bedroom closet, surely — her parents do not care enough to give her a real bedroom), with only a threadbare blanket to wrap around her naked, bruised body, she reminds me almost of myself, when I was locked inside the Nightmare King's heart. She is very small — smaller than me, even, except that my own skinny limbs are not marred by scars and scrapes.

She pulls the blanket closer as she hears her mother and father in the other room, yelling. She flinches when she hears a crash, like a bottle thrown against a wall. But she does not cry out. She knows the penalty for saying even a word.

Our cries are silent.

My tears join hers.

I want to shine, but I do not dare. I am afraid of what she might think.

Would she even be able to see my light?


	3. The Homeless

**This next one ties indirectly with my poem, Compassion. You can find it on FictionPress under the penname MethodlessMadness.**

**And while you're there…mind reviewing anything else?**

**(New cover art! Drawn by me...it's so fun drawing Nightlight.)**

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_The Homeless_

* * *

He is a six-year-old boy and the man of the house.

The soggy cardboard house — shelter for himself, his single mother, and a scrawny baby girl — a poor shield against the pounding rain. His mother is too sick for work and we're both reminded of the fact every time she coughs. Sometimes I fear that after she coughs she never breathe again, and I know that the boy fears it too.

His eyes are hollow, wary, too large for his face, and never stop moving. Scanning the streets, watching the few pedestrians (many of whom are as poor as they), tensed up and ready to fight anyone or anything that poses a threat.

I stand as a guard on the threshold of this refrigerator-box home.

At least I can give him the courage to stand.


	4. The Mother

_The Mother_

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She is a small, dark little thing cocooned in the clothes of an Indian woman, though she is only thirteen years old.

She cradles a newborn baby in her arms.

Her husband, a man a decade older, stands nearby. He yells, cursing the birth of his firstborn — a daughter. The mother is afraid. She fears the wrath of the man she does not love, the man she was sold to in order to pay off her own family's debt. She knows he will kill her child, and even though she had never wanted to become a mother in the first place, she loves her daughter.

If only the baby could have been a boy! Then maybe her husband would not be so mad. Then maybe the infant could live.

I can do nothing. I do not want to watch. But I must — I have to — I cannot turn away. They are both little more than children, the girl and her baby, and I cannot just leave.

I am courage. Innocence. Light.

And it seems so hopeless sometimes that I just want to cry.

It puzzles me — why does my light shine so dimly in this darkness?

* * *

***shrugs sadly* It actually happens.**

**I'm just putting it out there.**


	5. The Soldier

_The Soldier_

* * *

He's twelve, he holds a gun in his hands and wears a helmet on his forehead —

I wish it was only a game, but it's not.

His friends are around him, playing their parts, lifting their guns, firing at the men and children on the other side of the war-scarred trenches. The boy next to him — barely older than he — falls backward with a cry, and involuntarily he lets out a shriek.

No one hears over the screams and explosions of war.

Except for me.

The stench of gunpowder and freshly spilled blood — the sounds of rifle fire and screaming soldiers — the sight of dead men and dead children. It's a war, that's what it is, not a war of light versus darkness (not a war of the kind that I know) but a war of nothing but death, death and pain, death and sorrow and suffering —

(Even Death himself cries.

It smashes my heart, he says. It stomps on the shards and pulls away the tears.

Never had I thought I'd agree with Death.

But in his home court, I see, even the great Reaper is horrified to find children in his arms.)

* * *

**This _does _have to do with Rise of the Guardians.**

**Trust me.**


	6. The Unborn

…**when will you people learn not to say stuff like that around me.**

**Sorry, chocykitty, but this really is better than the other one I had planned. Thanks for the inspiration.**

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_The Unborn_

* * *

(She's not even five months old — some might even consider her age to be in the negative numbers.)

(Alone in the womb but not alone in the world, always comforted by the sounds of her mother's heartbeat.)

(It's warm in here, she says to herself and to me, and she loves to swim, but she can't wait for the day she can get out.)

(The day she can run and play with me, with other children. The day she can meet me face to face.)

I don't tell her that this day might never come. I don't tell her where her mother is going, or why.

(She hears the doctor but doesn't know what he's saying.)

_But she is a child!_

I want to scream.

_ She reacts and thinks and even dreams!_

_ She isn't unwanted!_

(I almost cannot bear to listen — she screams as the chemical seeps in. She cries for someone, _anyone, _to make the overwhelming pain stop.)

(And then there's silence, filled only by the sound of my sobs.)

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**Reviews are optional.**

**Just...don't flame.**

**Really, you don't want to argue with me.**


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